Livescribe's Pulse Smartpen

Smartpen's have been around for a while, granted. While they still seem to be tied to specially designed paper for use, Livescribe has come up with a new feature that will really appeal to fellow gadget-philes. Their new Pulse pen includes audio recording and playback.

This may not sound like anything revolutionary, given the vast array of MP3 players/recorders available, but keep reading. The recording feature on the Pulse activates while you are writing with it. The intended use is for instances like during lectures when you may wish to record the lecture itself. With the Pulse, you can record the lecture while you take notes, and the Pulse software associates your notes with the audio recorded when they were written, like a new type of bookmarking.

I just can't get over how cool this would be to work with, but it opens itself up to certain types of unintended usage as well. Imagine that you are drawing a picture and mumbling to yourself. Later, you can listen to what you were mumbling when you drew certain parts. Listen to your own random verbal chatter and comfort noises only to pause at certain odd parts to find out what the heck you were writing at the time. Ok, maybe I'm the only one that would be fascinated by that...

Another interesting use would be to review all of the audio recorded at the end of each day, separate from reading your various notes, as a mnemonic device. That would make it a great gift for elderly relatives with failing memory.

Livescribe even supports a social networking feature that allows you to share recorded pages/sessions with friends.

If someone gets one for me, I promise to podcast/vlog the notes periodically! I think it would be great to just remix the audio, but I'm a bit off in the noggin. Of course, if you are reading this, that's what you came for...